specifically there's a number on page 191. it's under the heading pr rpgt and says 175,000 -- >> where is that? what document are you referring to? >> it's the budget that has it line by line for all of the departments and page 191 and we're wondering if it's for the harding park pga tour or being used for something else. that's it. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good afternoon supervisors. i am lindsey seal and here on behalf of the sierra club. the mayor's proposal proposed this amount to give to the golf course fund

and includes $1 million for a short fall balance as stated by the city's own budget update is caused by revenue loss and environmental issues at sharp park. the question is why does the city of san francisco need to spent 2.5 million dollars to fund golf courses that include one in san mateo county that floods every winter and killing two endangered species in the process? thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hello i am harriet larkin and here from renaissance parents of success and nonprofit in the southeast sector. however we serve all children city wide and by children i mean youth. we also support the families and we were not defunded for our specialized team, social justice program or work force development programs that were

developed by our children who are black and brown and yellow, and we are asking for their support. by not receiving the support it sends a message to the children who work hard collectively from different communities and different ethnic backgrounds that they don't matter and the focus was actually the right for african-americans to remain. every time you go to a meeting that is the focal point of the young people want to address that and it's not recognized. the group that the developed the program is diverse was not -- one of the comments is it's not diverse. i am personally offended because one of the comments there was not enough post secondary education among the staff. our staff has been doing this work for more than 20 years. any other agency, even the city itself recognizes education versus work experience, and we take offense

to this. we speak openly to our children. they know what the comments were and it's just sad that you sent message that was sent that the people they consider their family don't matter. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hi. my name is loretta davis and i work for the reason -- renaissance center and started with calworks program and ended in 2012. i have been there since then as of january 2 this year. i'm a volunteer. i have been volunteering ever since my job ended because i still have clients and they need me. i refuse to leave them just no where, nobody to help them out.

[inaudible] i refuse to let it go until i am finished so my position i'm administrative assistant /case manager. we deal with youth from the age 14 through 17. from there we go to 18 to 24 and from there we go on to 25 to 105. it doesn't matter. if you can work you can work. we're not just district here and there we're city wide. we do what we do. i love my job and until you guys can give us the funding i appreciate it if you do. i will continue to volunteer my services because i am needed and i feel important to the people and i am appreciated. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker please. >> my name is keith. i'm one of

the volunteers for these people, and i volunteer all the time, everyday, five days a week, and they do a lot of things real good for these people, black, brown, blue, whatever, you know what i am saying? really you all need to really look into these people and really looking into how the way they work, and a lot of the people need to be around these people man. we try to do a lot of stuff for our community and try to have these people do things right instead of being in jail and being on paperwork and all the stuff like that they need to be out here doing getting jobs and doing other stuff. that's all i have to say. thank you. >> thank you very much. next

speaker. >> hi. i am greg boxley. everybody has been very passionate on why they should be getting money. i'm just going to get to the facts. eric mar mar talked about a lot of good things looking at the demographics. let's go back. you have a migration report. you have an unfinished agenda. gavin newsom signed off that and there is short fall in the comment and the black community sat back and allowed everybody else to grow. even in the budget cuts right now and the city has recognized the shortcomings, the development done in district 10, billions of dollars being pumped in how can you not take under consideration when you do the budget these important short coming in these

reports. you might as well use it as a table mat. number two, i sat on a few board in the city. fob and executive board for affordable housing. i also worked in real estate for 10 years selling money. i am trying to figure out why i can't get black people in housing and why i got into community work. at the end of the day any investment, the investment dollars that we have that are city taxpayer members that pay taxes we're looking for a return. our return is the majority of our people have jobs. the majority of our people are not in jail. the majority of our people are productive. that's the return you want to see. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker please. come on up. >> hello. i am a donis

williams and from district 11 and formerly as the [inaudible] district. i am a graduate of lowell high school and i can say that inner city youth has played a key role in my success. from fostering positive growth in me academically and professionally it's the goal of inner city youth it was their goal they was prepared after high school and reflect on the programs that inner city youth affected by success. to this end funding for the teen program is important as inner city youth maintains their commitment to serve the youth that comes through the doors. i wouldn't be where i am today without such programs and initiatives by this program that aided in my success. thank you and with me is our executive director michael brown. >> thank you a donis. you said

that very good. we have a population in san francisco in the 1999 census. you should be 44% african-american in district 10 -- district 11 i'm sorry. that was in the 1990 census. now we're a population of 4%. how can we have 65% african-american incarcerated but we have the aggressive leaders in our community? we have coalitions that are beautiful, all of the coalitions and everything, but when it come to the the african-american they're doing this, doing that. all of this negativity. we want the leadership to stand up for the people who have been stepped on the most. how can i give him a job if i ain't got a job? that's the problem. that's what they're talking about in district 11. they all fight for funding because they need jobs

in order to give the kids a helping hand so this has been a revolving door. we talk about economics and equity and inclusion but when we go to somebody with a contract and get help. well, you know politically i can't help you and all this nonsense but you can go outside this county and other districts and we get help, but i mean we are in that part and african-americans are melting away. if we put the emphasis on the endangered species like we put on the african-americans we putting up some conservation program to make sure that we can ensure that they stay here like we do for the whales, like we do for the garden snakes. i know san francisco you can do better and this is a progressive city so 55% was cut in the program. we asked for the music program.

they cut it out. transition -- going to an organization. they don't work with that youth. i know it's been a long day. consider that and come around. come around. we're not strangers. come around. thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is sue anne shift and executive director of san francisco botanical garden society and here in support of the lease agreement and the fee. there are other people here who will speak in support and other people unfortunately had to leave. in addition i have here a print copy of the online petition that we started at the beginning of this week, and i will be giving it to the clerk afterwards. we have 672 signatures so far and the

comments are also included here. the botanical garden society has worked in partnership with the recreation and park department for 60 years. we exist for one reason and that is support the botanical garden to make it the institution that it is today that both cherished locally and respected globally. in recent years our budget has ranged from 2.5 to $3 million. we fund and staff many essential functions including all of the botanical garden's education and community outreach activities. i want to highlight our youth education program as one of them. we serve 10,000 children a year. we reach almost every public elementary and k through eight school in san francisco. this is a really important program that we want to grow, not be forced to shrink for lack of funds. we fund the gardens

management activities. we fund improvements. we are funding the nursery center for sustainable gardening and hiring and total support is more than $2 million a year and provide the garden 36,000 volunteer hours a year. fee revenue has grown to exceed expectations and we are growing as well. botanical garden is not different from other cultural institutions. the garden cannot survive on city funding alone much thank you very much. >> good afternoon supervisors. my name is mary pitts. i'm a dosant and trustee at the san francisco botanical garden. i'm here to support the lease management agreement and also the admissions program for non

residents. i'm very impressed with the budget process which i have sat through for hours today. i have new respect for what you do and i am simply here to ask you and glad to ask you to allow us to contribute to the city in the way that we. do we contribute the -- the botanical garden society contracts through school programs, education and outreach and through the tens of thousands of hours of volunteer hours which benefit the city. in the more than 44 years i have been a resident here where my children were born, where they were raised i watched and participated in the botanical garden. i have seen what the society has allowed the garden to do to develop unique collections and new asian discovery garden, the expansion of the asian plant collection and educational materials and expansion of the childrens' gardens which teaches thousands of children and their families now on the weekends about the

natural world and the need to be a tender of the natural world. as a dosant i can say that i have seen visitors come from all parts of the globe specifically to see things in our garden that you can't see anywhere else and i invite any of you that don't understand what the garden does in that way to come and have a dosant take you around and see. one resident who was opposed to paying a fee because she didn't have her card -- i paid the fee for her. took her on a toor with me and she thinks everybody in the garden should pay because it's such a wonderful place. i urge you to come with me and find out why. >> my name is bob hendenburg. i'm a volunteer at the center

and i became one to learn about plants and i have been learning about plants and since then i changed the way i think about the arbor rightum and a nice place in the golden gate park but since i have been working there i understand it's really something different. it's like a museum. they have got all these amazing plants there, strange and weird things, wonderful thanks from all over the world. >> >> thanks that are hard to grow. you need experts and boftnists and all expertise and i think of it as the people that run the swroor you have to know what you're doing or the people that run the museum to take care of all the beautiful objects and i think if you starve such a place of funding it goes down. it's no

longer a precious thing and if you support it properly you can make it more wonderful than it is now. i think it is justified to have other people -- i think there are two reasons to support it. one is the economic reason. you make it more wonderful more people want to come and it becomes another feather in the cap of san francisco. the other thing is fairness. is it fair? i think it is to have non residents pay. when i go to berkeley i have to pay $10 to get in. on the internet i looked it up yesterday if i go to london i have to pay $25 to go to theirs and it seem to me if you don't live here you don't pay taxes here and you want to see the strange and wonderful plants we can ask you to pay. thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is

earnest ying and a volunteer in golden gate for the past 25 years and also a dosant at the san francisco botanical garden for 15 years. i came here to speak for the lease management agreement. the san francisco botanical gardens society and the city work together. the society is the major fundraiser for the botanical garden. we provide education through the works of the dosant, the library and the book store. we run the nursery propagating plants, buying plants and this is the major benefit for the city and the park here. they buy the plants and support also the infrastructure. this is a 60 year success story. i hope that we can continue on to do this year. i hope that you can see that the benefit that the city does get from this organization here. i am here also to support the continuance of the non residents fee for the botanical

garden. this is another success story despite of what some of the naysayers said four years ago. visitors expect to come to -- when you visit another city expect to pay for many of the things that you visit and i have seen people who have been through the garden and then before they leave add extra donations to the donation box here. without the fee we would lose about three to four gardeners and 1/3 of the staff and no organization can survive with 1/3 of the staff gone here so supervisors i hope that you consider this. you have been hearing people ask for money and not cutting the budget and here we have a society that earns money and the fee for the park is actually a source of revenue nobody considered three or four years ago so this is a plus, plus for the city and the park.

thank you. >> i want to thank the supervisors for their perve verance. i admire it and pity for the large number of conversations that have gone on this afternoon all of which are worth and he highlight the many important issues in san francisco. my name is larry pitts. i'm a 44 year residents of san francisco and i want to urge the budget committee to consider recommending the agreement between rec and park, the management agreement between rec and park and the san francisco botanical garden society. it's a remarkable place. it is in fact of a museum which was said as a negative this morning and it's inaccurate and not true. it trued all san franciscans. the non residents fees are for those

living outside of san francisco and it's for the garden of the garden has areas of growth that can't be sustained in most places in the world. for example we have a cloud forest for south america, southeast asia and no where else can do that because we have unique climbate here and with the california native garden and with birds and insects from california. the volunteers provide a great service to the city in education and managing the nursery and many other tasks. these are services that enrich the garden and enrich the lives of californians and san franciscans so i urge you to support the management agreement, and for the continuation of the non resident fees. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker.

>> good afternoon supervisors. my name is monica martin and i have two statements this afternoon. my own and one who had to leave earlier. i'm a botanical garden volunteer and a member of the board of trustees. in the botanical garden society was formed to look after the garden. its soul purpose was and is to support the development of the garden and provide educational programs. our partner in achieving that is the city. we couldn't do it without you. the non resident fee has worked well. it's important for the maintenance of the garden. the lease and government agreement is fair. it's the result of long negotiations between the interested parties and i urge you to support the agreement and renewal of the fee. this statement -- i'm now taking the name. dr. joe barbachi "i

serve as a educational dosant and educator in the program. i want to relate several of my recent experiences in the garden. yesterday morning i gave an educational walk for 10 of our summer enterprise high school and college interns and their mentor. they're working with one of gardeners using a staff design plan to install the first mediterranean basin program. we discuss the importance of plants. we talked about the difficult problem of global warming. it's my firm conclusion that the fee has maintained the botanical garden and i am concerned that the lack of the understanding of the importance of the collection and our educational role in the crucial relationship in plants and people. i want to urge you to support the new lease and management agreement and the continuance of the fee thank

you". >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello. my name is joseph mack. i am a botanical garden society volunteer. i'm speaking as an individual. i want to briefly go into my personal archive. i found a photo of me in a bunch of head start kids visiting the japanese tea garden. please consider the lease agreement to make this a reality of supporting children into the future. whatever direction the budget committee goes please approximate the welcome mat of the past into the

future. thank you. >> thank you next speaker. >> hello. i am ramone gonzalez and a student at san francisco university and here representing san francisco state college -- [inaudible] and i have been and because of me going to the garden i did research on plants and seeing how the upkeep of the plants and i would hate for that to go to waste and i urge you to approve the lease management agreement and approve the fee. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please.

>> and addition be being i beautiful place there are programs that provide san francisco residents that are valuable for our future and again i hope you renew the non resident fee. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is lane borden. i think it's fitting that my first foray into san francisco politics involves plants and i have been a fan since i was three. i am a new resident of san francisco but coming to the botanical garden for 20 years. it's one of the things i visit every trip so i have a perspective as a non resident visitor in the past and i don't find -- didn't find the

fee to be particularly onerous and i don't find it onerous currently especially in light of the fact this is part of the budget that actually is bringing in a bit of revenue and others have asked for it to be cut. i think it's a modest imposition of bringing some form of id which most of the services that are target the towards residents require anyway. the botanical garden is a museum that is living and breathing that requires care and maintenance for the collections to survive and thrive and to consider it merely as a place to picnic is doing it a disservice. it's far more than that. i urge you to support the lease management agreement and the non precedent fee. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hello supervisors. i am big rich and represent project level and we occupy and operate the

recording studio of african-american art and culture complex. we could stay up here all day and talk about our list of accomplishments. we are a musicking programming program in a safe environment that the african-american cultural center has provided for the youth. this is a small fraction of us here but i wanted to speak on behalf -- actually we were requested by the district attorney's office to write the theme song and we performed it today on the steps here and we have been operating for the last year on a shoe string budget and any other cuts will disable what we're doing anyway. veronica who is one of our stars, one of the team leaders wants to speak of what we do at the center also. >> thank you. >> hello i am veronica. i just kind of want to talk about project level as an organization. it's not only

just music. it's a family base where somewhere you feel comfortable where you're out of the difficults that our teenagers and young people are going through, and i know a lot of people hear about the shootings and killings and people you know killed left to right, but project level is a place where you're safe and you're occupied and you're learning everyday, and this past year i have learned and i have grown as a person. i was in trouble myself with the law before, and the head coordinators rich and danielle helped me get out of that. they have been at my court meetings and even with my being stable at home. i grew up in foster care and they have helped me to have a stable -- something stable in my life because everything has always hasn't been consist annual. i can list a lot of.

>> >> stuff that project level has done. i got to sing at london breed's i can never say the word. i am sorry. i will get better at it but that was a blessing. that was one of the performances i will never forget and project level is just -- it's not just music. it's saving lives and i just want to please like -- please we don't need anymore budget cuts and that's pretty much it for me. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker please. >> good afternoon. thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. my name is peter demeris. i'm a volunteer and serve on the board for the st. francis living room on golden gate avenue in the heart of the tenderloin. st. francis living room monday through friday provides hot nutritious breakfast, activities and a